There is Beauty in Need
by Imladviel
Summary: Alternate universe story of a world where trolls serve the Gliders instead of humans... and where instead of Smelt the troll, Winnowill embraces a human captive...
1. There is Beauty in Need

**There is Beauty in Need**

We have all we ever hoped for, here. So he said. Yes, we had peace and safety. The preservers and trolls served us just as they had served the High Ones. Our rockshapers kept the trolls under control, and our generous rewards of jewels and gold assured they saw the benefit in doing our will. They lived separate from us and were allowed much independence in their realm deep under Blue Mountain.

But Voll was mistaken. We had but the best of one world. And I had learned that worlds die. He refused my plans for eternity.

So I left Blue Mountain. The Palace of the High Ones, if I found it, would surely convince him - and if not, well, as master of the Palace I would not need him anymore. The gliders would all turn to me and hearken to my wisdom.

But my journey was interrupted when I found him.

The first human I ever saw, a hunter, weakened by wounds and hunger.

There is beauty in need.

It is life to a healer.

I mended him enough that he could walk, and took him back to Blue Mountain with me.

I took him to my secret champers built by the trolls, chambers no rock-shaper's hand had ever touched. I had the preservers bind him, I healed him and gave him food and drink.

Later I allowed him to walk in my chambers, making sure he had no weapons at hand. I taught him our language, and he was a swift learner.

What he told me was... disturbing.

This hunter was after no four-legged prey. He had been sent by his chief to catch elves, whom he called demons, to bring them to be sacrificed to the master spirit Gotara.

His name was Setten.

He would be an easy one. I smiled my most radiant smile at him.

"If I was a demon, why would I heal you and feed you? You would be dead without me."

"That's true, oh shining one. I owe you my life. I think you are no demon but a good and wise spirit. I used to serve Gotara, but now I serve you, oh bright and beautiful spirit, you who have done miracles with your touch."

"Very well. You are mine now. But remember, if you betray me the hands that healed you will deal pain such as you have never felt."

His eyes showed me he understood. I knew then, that fear was a tool that had been used on him before. As he had feared Gotara he feared me, now.

His fear and his worship - I don't know which tasted sweeter.

Setten served me, and I soon became accustomed to him always at my side. He was more pleasing to look at than the trolls, and once I got used to the strange bends of his mind, I discovered a new view at the world. A human view. It did not compare with the purity of elven thought, but was infinitely more satisfying to my curiousity than the blunt, greed-filled souls of my trollish slaves.

Then I became curious about his body.

His desire for me was a burning flame, his bloodsong slow but ohh so deep...

I tasted of this new pleasure often, I even used my powers on him to rouse him again when he was spent, so much did I enjoy him, and the fire born of his worship.

A new thought came to me.

A thought of Timmain... a half-forgotten, half-believed story from the days of the Firstcomers...

What she had done by instinct I would have to do slowly, changing every cell in my body. It was a challenge - but I thrive at challenges.

I took a human shape, yes, but I did more. For a while I became human, or close enough.

I joined with my servant and I was with child.

A beautiful new life inside me, then in my arms, her father wondering at her half-elven beauty - it was bliss, it was perfection.

Setten asked me humbly to name her - I sent to my child, and found inside her the secret name that was her elfin soul. But I would not reveal that to her brute of a father.

"Two-Edge, that she is. A bright blade in my hand."

She would have been, my mortal daughter, but for Setten.

Even though I had resumed my shape he began to think of us as a family, and himself the head of it. He forgot the worship. Worse, he forgot the fear.

One day he argued against me and struck me a blow with the back of his hand.

He did not live to touch me again.

Two-Edge saw him dead, and did not believe he had deserved it. It drove her mad...

The taste of her madness was pleasing to me.


	2. The Puppet On the Strings

**The Puppet on the Strings**

Minek, Winnowill's lovemate-of-the-moment, looked at the captive with something close to pity in his eyes. The girl had long brown hair, shaggy and uncombed, that stood up in dirty tangles and covered her pointed ears. She had five fingers to each hand, four toes to each foot. She was tall and bony, malnourished. He wished there was something he could do. Oh, he could do a lot, he could shape away the spiked bars of her cage, but he knew Winnowill would punish if he let her favourite plaything escape.

Two-Edge shivered, clad in a short, torn dress. She stared at the bars that stood between her and freedom. In the flickering torchlight it seemed, sometimes, almost as if they moved. Almost.

Two-Edge stared at the bars, stared through them at the spacious chambers of Winnowill. She blinked her tired eyes. Oh, how she wished to be on the other side of those bars! Her dreams no longer extended any farther than that, Winnowill had burned her soul, killed her dreams, broken her senses.

Two-Edge stared at the bars, stared through them - at an empty cell.

It took her a moment to realize she was outside. Somehow her dream had come true. She took some faltering steps, ate fruit from a bowl, drank water from another. She started looking for a way out.

But there was no way out of Winnowill's chambers. She searched for a place to hide, found one behind a curtain.

She listened.

Minek's footsteps, few and far between for he glided most of the time. Minek eating, sitting down. Silence.

A draft of fresh air, from a newly-opened tunnel in the wall. Winnowill's footsteps, the rustling of her gown. Then her voice:

"Where is she? The captive?"

Minek's voice trembled as he answered:

"I don't know."

"Liar! The bars are whole. You let her out! You helped her escape! Don't think I haven't seen the pity in your eyes! You will pay for this. The rest of your immortal life you will pay for this. You have no name. You have no life. You are Door."

Silence. Winnowill's footsteps. Once again the draft when a wall opened. Silence.

Two-Edge peered from her hiding-place and saw Minek seated high above on a throne set in the wall. He was still as a statue.

"Minek! Help me! Let me out!"

But he didn't answer. Two-Edge hammered her fists on the wall until her hands bleeded, then fell down sobbing. She was still a captive. Exhausted, she fell asleep at Minek's feet.

Winnowill found her there when she returned.

"So, he didn't have the chance to let you out of the mountain, my child?" She whispered almost gently, then kicked her until she woke.

"What... oh no! Not the cage! Please mother, not the cage again!"

"I don't know how you managed to win Minek's heart, ugly little creature that you are, but I have a task for you, another heart to win. First, though, we must make you pretty. Rise, my child."

Winnowill offered her hand. Dazed, Two-Edge took it and got on her feet.

The touch was all Winnowill needed. She reshaped her daughter. Her skin turned pale, her lanky and awkward body became lush with delicate curves, her fingeres were now four, her eyes larger, lips and nose smaller, her hair was white and silky and almost as long as her mother's.

"Now have a look at yourself, my child." Winnowill led her to a mirror.

Two-Edge screamed.

"No! I hate it! I don't want to be an elf! I'm human! I'm Setten's daughter!"

"It's either this, or the cage. Humans are animals and deserve to be caged up. You choose."

"Very well. What do you want of me?"

"Much better. Do as I say and I will give you your true name. For now, your name is Aureel and Lord Voll is your father. I gave birth to you in secret because I feared you would not be born alive and I wanted to save him the sorrow. But as soon as you were born you were stolen by a troll, who took you far away. You were raised by trolls. Today you found your way back home. Now, put on this dress and I'll take you to meet your father."

"But... that isn't true!"

"For you, whatever I say is true. Or else... the cage."

"Yes, mother."

Thus began Two-Edge's life in a lie. Winnowill taught her to send with one painful touch, and after that it was seldom that she did not hear her mother's instructions in her head, telling her what to do, what to say, what to wear... She was Aureel, a Glider who could not glide, like her mother. She was Lord Voll's daughter and heir. White-haired, flower-delicate, she sat meek at her father's feet or conversed with the Gliders. Winnowill inserted false memories in her head so she could speak convincingly of her life among the trolls.

Many times she swore to herself she would escape, or tell Voll the truth, but her spirit was weak, and time after time her mother won her over again. The promise of her true name was one way of keeping her loyal, another was the threat of the cage. The name would be kept from her, Winnowill told her, until she learned not to question her commands. A couple of times she was returned to the cage for short periods of time when she had misbehaved. In the end, though, what made her life bearable was Voll's love for her. False though she was, it was something she needed to keep her from total madness. If he learned the truth he would not love her anymore.

Time went by. Winnowill noticed her daughter was aging, like the mortal she was. There was nothing to be done about it - there was too much of the world in her blood to be burned away, purified. All Winnowill could do was make her appear perfect on the outside, ageless. But she knew that could not go on forever. So she invented an illness for Aureel, and pretended even she could not heal it. There was no choice but to put "Aureel" in wrapstuff until a cure was found, which would be never if Winnowill had any choice. Her puppet had proven a disappointment, of little use in anything except another means to control Voll. And of those she had plenty. Aureel had shown some half-developed magic powers, and it was a pity she could not be trained further in those.

To the last, until Winnowill put a sleep on her, Two-Edge begged for her true name. She realized Winnowill had deceived her when she heard her mother's laughter. It was the last sound she would hear for a long time.

Two-Edge slept, in a chamber deep under Blue Mountain. She dreamed a song of forgiving and forgetting. A song where there was no cage, no treason, no lie, no Aureel. Where all was forgotten and her memory was white as snow. Where Voll remembered her not, loved her not, mourned her not. Where Winnowill remembered her not, used her not, needed her not.

She dreamed.

And in Blue Mountain, all in one night, her dream came true.

Memories were wiped away. As far as anyone knew, herself included, Winnowill had never had a daughter.


	3. Epilogue

_**Epilogue**_

Two-Edge's true name was lost with her mother's memories.

Time passed, Blue Mountain fell. Two-Edge slept undisturbed.

Ages later she was found, her sealed chamber opened by humans digging a mine. Her magic powers had had time to develop during her sleep, but she had forgotten everything about her past.

So she named herself.

"I am Jink."


End file.
